1920

It's been awhile. Sometimes it's hard to find the balance it takes to keep a journal. I always figured an online one would be simpler. No scrounging for "just the right pen", or "just the right paper" or "just the right place". No empty pages staring you down as you try to begin.

But it's really all about time and priorities. ( There is still the question of pen ( font ), paper ( photo or not ??), and location ( I'm wireless, I can use any room ). Oh, and a blank screen is just as daunting as a blank page. )

Time and priority.

I wrestle with that. I always have. I love my PX site, but sometimes I spend TOO much time actually ON the site and not enough time sending mail. And even though I'm online, it's sooooo hard just to steer away for a minute and log an entry here. I find myself reading other blogs, commenting and cycling through all the other sites I frequent.

I'll do better.

Fall is when I settle down a bit. I don't have any more time, but I seem to narrow my focus a bit. Why, just today I noticed how leaves are beginning to change around me. I'll probably start taking an even longer route to work ( Egads ! ) just so I can bear witness to this change in the season. Highway 18 winds up to Tiger Mountain and then trails off onto the Interstate. In between where I live and that interesection at the Interstate is the most glorious scenery. So many trees. So many beautiful reminders of Mama Nature, when so many bad reminders are still lingering ...

Here's my suggestions this week: Rent CRASH.
Make a donation to your local food bank.
Notice the trees ...

And remember today : " The only thing that has to be finished by next Tuesday is next Monday "

1895

1894

Let's not forget about IRAQ. Let's not forget about our troops. But let's finally realize the TRUTH about this Administration and their promise of safety and preparedness. The " spin machine " is working overtime. In fact, I heard that after a delayed response to the Hurricane, FEMA officials were instructed to put a good face on this tragedy and their response to it. They were instructed FIRST AND FOREMOST, to " spin " this tragedy. Sickening. Shame on them all.


From BLOGGERMANN ( Olbermann @ MSNBC )

• September 5, 2005 | 8:58 p.m. ET

The "city" of Louisiana (Keith Olbermann)


SECAUCUS — Secretary of Homeland Security Michael Chertoff said it all, starting his news briefing Saturday afternoon: "Louisiana is a city that is largely underwater..."

Well there's your problem right there.

If ever a slip-of-the-tongue defined a government's response to a crisis, this was it.

The seeming definition of our time and our leaders had been their insistence on slashing federal budgets for projects that might’ve saved New Orleans. The seeming characterization of our government that it was on vacation when the city was lost, and could barely tear itself away from commemorating V.J. Day and watching Monty Python's Flying Circus, to at least pretend to get back to work. The seeming identification of these hapless bureaucrats: their pathetic use of the future tense in terms of relief they could’ve brought last Monday and Tuesday — like the President, whose statements have looked like they’re being transmitted to us by some kind of four-day tape-delay.

But no. The incompetence and the ludicrous prioritization will forever be symbolized by one gaffe by of the head of what is ironically called “The Department of Homeland Security”: “Louisiana is a city…”

Politician after politician — Republican and Democrat alike — has paraded before us, unwilling or unable to shut off the "I-Me" switch in their heads, condescendingly telling us about how moved they were or how devastated they were — congenitally incapable of telling the difference between the destruction of a city and the opening of a supermarket.

And as that sorry recital of self-absorption dragged on, I have resisted editorial comment. The focus needed to be on the efforts to save the stranded — even the internet's meager powers were correctly devoted to telling the stories of the twin disasters, natural... and government-made.

But now, at least, it is has stopped getting exponentially worse in Mississippi and Alabama and New Orleans and Louisiana (the state, not the city). And, having given our leaders what we know now is the week or so they need to get their act together, that period of editorial silence I mentioned, should come to an end.

No one is suggesting that mayors or governors in the afflicted areas, nor the federal government, should be able to stop hurricanes. Lord knows, no one is suggesting that we should ever prioritize levee improvement for a below-sea-level city, ahead of $454 million worth of trophy bridges for the politicians of Alaska.

But, nationally, these are leaders who won re-election last year largely by portraying their opponents as incapable of keeping the country safe. These are leaders who regularly pressure the news media in this country to report the reopening of a school or a power station in Iraq, and defies its citizens not to stand up and cheer. Yet they couldn't even keep one school or power station from being devastated by infrastructure collapse in New Orleans — even though the government had heard all the "chatter" from the scientists and city planners and hurricane centers and some group whose purposes the government couldn't quite discern... a group called The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers.

And most chillingly of all, this is the Law and Order and Terror government. It promised protection — or at least amelioration — against all threats: conventional, radiological, or biological.

It has just proved that it cannot save its citizens from a biological weapon called standing water.

Mr. Bush has now twice insisted that, "we are not satisfied," with the response to the manifold tragedies along the Gulf Coast. I wonder which "we" he thinks he's speaking for on this point. Perhaps it's the administration, although we still don't know where some of them are. Anybody seen the Vice President lately? The man whose message this time last year was, 'I'll Protect You, The Other Guy Will Let You Die'?

I don't know which 'we' Mr. Bush meant.

For many of this country's citizens, the mantra has been — as we were taught in Social Studies it should always be — whether or not I voted for this President — he is still my President. I suspect anybody who had to give him that benefit of the doubt stopped doing so last week. I suspect a lot of his supporters, looking ahead to '08, are wondering how they can distance themselves from the two words which will define his government — our government — "New Orleans."

For him, it is a shame — in all senses of the word. A few changes of pronouns in there, and he might not have looked so much like a 21st Century Marie Antoinette. All that was needed was just a quick "I'm not satisfied with my government's response." Instead of hiding behind phrases like "no one could have foreseen," had he only remembered Winston Churchill's quote from the 1930's. "The responsibility," of government, Churchill told the British Parliament "for the public safety is absolute and requires no mandate. It is in fact, the prime object for which governments come into existence."

In forgetting that, the current administration did not merely damage itself — it damaged our confidence in our ability to rely on whoever is in the White House.

As we emphasized to you here all last week, the realities of the region are such that New Orleans is going to be largely uninhabitable for a lot longer than anybody is yet willing to recognize. Lord knows when the last body will be found, or the last artifact of the levee break, dug up. Could be next March. Could be 2100. By then, in the muck and toxic mire of New Orleans, they may even find our government's credibility.

Somewhere, in the City of Louisiana.

SHAME walking ...

1886

Thinking tonight about the unimaginable events of the past week. It has eclipsed the horror in IRAQ with a new horror here. I frequent an internet forum that has members from all over the world. While they share our sadness, many also share our frustration and rage at the slow Federal response. I wrote earlier, somewhere else, that I wonder whether the fact that it was poor, black communities that were hit the hardest, had anything to do with the delays. It's terrible to think of it all that way, and yet I am disgusted by the " spin machine " hitting the airwaves trying to paint a pretty picture about an ugly, ugly tragedy. They have been doing it in IRAQ for months, but HERE it won't work. HERE, we can see the pictures. We can hear the stories first hand. These are our friends and families. You can't " spin " yourself out of this one, George.

I suppose the worst part for me is having the FEMA chief and " Homeland Security " chief talking about this catastrophe like no one could have predicted this storm, the flooding and despair. Not only COULD someone predict it, someone DID. The TIMES-Picayune predicted, with startling detail, the events that could happen in the event of a major hurricane and flood in New Orleans. And this wasn't days ago ... it was long enough ago to PLAN for the possibility. Really, you owe it to yourself to READ THIS series of articles from the TIMES-Picayune. It will infuriate you every time you hear one of the administration " talking heads " try to shift responsibility onto the victims of this horrible tragedy. This administration knew. They saw it coming. And they CUT funding. Shame on them.
http://www.nola.com/hurricane/?/washingaway/

I actually saw where the FEMA chief said the VICTIMS had to assume a good share of the responsibility. Shame on him. Those are not CNN/ cell phone communities that nearly perished in this tragedy. They may have never even gotten the word that this time it was for real ! So many false alarms before. I imagine they became immune to the reports of a big huuricane coming their way. Just another slow news day where the TV stations blow everything out of proportion in order to HAVE some news to report. Sad situation.

Thank God Americans haven't lost their faith. There are stories coming from Mississippi and Louisiana that are heartbreaking, and yet rich with the human spirit. Our people keep us strong. But our government has to go.

George Bush's response has been shameful.
And Dennis Hastert isn't far behind.
The people deserve better.

America ?

America, is that you ??

An AP Essay: Is this happening in America?

By JIM LITKE

Associated Press Writer





Image after image of unrelenting sorrow, layered one atop the other like a deck of haunting cards. A baby held aloft, inches above a sea of desperate faces, gasping for air. The dead left where they've fallen, in plain view, robbed of even the simple dignity of a shroud. Survivors waiting, then begging, then fighting, finally, over food and water.

Here.

While the images of natural disasters and man-made ones alike, from Sri Lanka or Baghdad, cause despair, the pictures from New Orleans inspire not just helplessness, but disbelief. The richest, most powerful nation in the world can build schools, hospitals and shelters halfway around the globe, but it can't provide the basic necessities for its own days after a disaster that everybody saw coming?

Here?

Usually, we shudder, change the channel or turn the page, awaiting better news. But there is something too compelling about these pictures. The distance between us and the people in them has been narrowed, rendered uncomfortably close, and not just for those who are family, friends or neighbors. We recognize them. We all see people like them.

Here.

Authorities can't make the waters that did that retreat. They can't begin to rebuild the levee or the homes and businesses made uninhabitable, at least not now. They will never be able to restore much of what was washed away in the flood.

But if a reporter can interview a man standing outside a looted drugstore, and record his reluctance at having to go inside and steal pads for incontinence, why couldn't someone get medical supplies to the people huddled at the Superdome or the convention center in time, or the buses promised to evacuate them?

There are more questions than answers, and will be for years to come. That's the nature of disaster, and its aftermath. They expose our fragility, overwhelm our best intentions, mock our attempts to impose the sense of calm and order that prevails when life proceeds according to some rough plan.

Yet, ultimately, that's what is most unsettling about the constant stream of images: The suffering goes on not just for hours, but for days after we should have and could have ended it. And for all the commissions, reports and bravado that passes for preparedness, we didn't. It was a hand we never expected to be dealt.

Here.

There will be time enough, too, to assess blame, for politicians to point fingers, find and fire those deemed accountable. And maybe even to figure out how a handful of Southeast Asian governments, whose economies, armies and emergency resources could all be folded comfortably several times inside those of the United States, responded to a tsunami much larger and fiercer than Hurricane Katrina with swiftness and efficiency, and we could not. And so the frustration builds, not so much over what happened, but what did not.

Here.

In the meantime, the disturbing images keep rolling in, interrupted now and then by more hopeful ones. The trucks, jeeps, buses and helicopters so scarce the past few days are out moving in force. Police and National Guardsmen are on the streets, rescue workers are getting in place. The babies in the latest pictures are contentedly emptying bottles, pallets filled with water and food are being unloaded by human chains. One administration official after another turns up on the screen to offer reassurances and soothing words.

But the damage has been done, and it's no longer limited to the lives lost and ruined, or the property destroyed. Those are things, sadly enough, that can be totaled up over time.

Much harder to measure is the cost of all those searing images burned into the national conscience, and what they've done to the sense of security that was our last refuge when disasters wreaked havoc, and then, unnecessary suffering, in distant lands - the certainty that it couldn't happen here.

Now we know better.